Re: 6.0 BETA1 if_ath problems

I'm sorry. I was grumpy when I wrote this.

On Sat, Jul 23, 2005 at 04:19:45PM -0700, Sam Leffler wrote:
> James Snow wrote:
> >On Fri, Jul 22, 2005 at 10:09:48PM +0200, Toni Schmidbauer wrote:
> >
> >>so it seems things are getting better under 6.0.
> >
> >
> >Unfortunately, I'm having the opposite experience. My X40's ath seems to
> >get worse with each update. Right now it downs the ath0 interface
> >at random intervals.
> 
> I have one of almost every version of atheros part and I do not see the 
> problems you allude to; not that you've provided any useful info here. 
> In general I tend to ignore complaints of the form "it don't work".

I have no useful information here since, as mentioned above, it's been
completely random thus far. It may also be something that was fixed in
my most recent update; time will tell.

> >Also, when in adhoc mode it will sometimes spew errors, to the point of
> >slowing the machine down. Repeatedly doing an 'ifconfig down' and
> >reconfiguring the interface will eventually stabilize it.
> 
> Again, nothing useful here.  I just fixed a couple of adhoc mode 
> problems yesterday that are likely unrelated.  I had a network of 4 
> machines setup in adhoc mode; 2 ath freebsd systems, one powerbook with 
> tiger, and one freebsd system with wi.  All were in the same room. I saw 
> no problems in several hours of testing.  When the 11b station was not 
> in the network I routinely got 28Mb/s for tcp netperf between stations 
> (this is 11g).

This at least I can reproduce. It's only a problem when I'm first trying
to bring up the adhoc network. Once it's up, (i.e., another node as
associated with it) it stays up and is problem free.

dev.ath.0.debug: 0xc0080 => 0xc00e0<reset,mode,beacon,state,node>

I configure ath0 as follows:

ifconfig ath0 172.16.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.252 ssid x40 wepmode off \
mediaopt adhoc

And eventually I get stuck in this loop:

ath0: hardware error; resetting
ath_draintxq: beacon queue 0x1eb8ac00
ath_tx_stopdma: tx queue [0] 0, link 0
ath_tx_stopdma: tx queue [1] 0, link 0
ath_tx_stopdma: tx queue [2] 0, link 0
ath_tx_stopdma: tx queue [3] 0, link 0
ath_tx_stopdma: tx queue [8] 0, link 0
ath_stoprecv: rx queue 0x1868dc, link 0xc15f28b0
ath_mode_init: RX filter 0x97, MC filter 00000001:00000040
ath_beacon_config: nexttbtt 100 intval 100 (100)
ath_beacon_setup: m 0xc1835200 len 58
ath0: hardware error; resetting

athstats:

66 hardware error interrupts
56 mib overflow interrupts
36 tx management frames
110 tx frames discarded prior to association
182 long on-chip tx retries
33 tx frames with no ack marked
26131 rx failed 'cuz of bad CRC
2082 rx failed 'cuz of PHY err
    346 OFDM timing
    199 CCK timing
    1537 CCK restart
68 beacons transmitted
1196 periodic calibrations
71582 rate control checks
52129 switched default/rx antenna
Antenna profile:
[1] tx     2838 rx   269272
[2] tx    16585 rx   280757

80211stats:

97454 rx from wrong bssid
125 rx discard 'cuz dup
30 rx discard 'cuz mcast echo
81100 rx discard mgt frames
349350 rx beacon frames
24 rx element unknown
24 rx frame chan mismatch
5 active scans started

This is the device:

ath0: <Atheros 5212> mem 0xd0200000-0xd020ffff irq 11 at device 2.0 on pci2
ath0: Ethernet address: 00:0e:9b:6e:60:fc
ath0: mac 5.9 phy 4.3 radio 3.6

Anything else I can provide, please let me know.

> I am not saying the code is perfect.  I'm aware of a couple of issues 
> that I'm working on but in general I am not seeing significant issues 
> with ath devices.  If you or anyone else wants to help fix problems you 
> need to provide useful information such as the mac/phy version for the 
> part and the output from 80211stats and/or athstats.  It also helps to 
> enable debugging msgs; usually at the 802.11 layer using 80211debug.

Again, I apologize for the tone of my last email. I was just being
generally bitchy and it was certainly not directed at you.


-Snow